Notes from 2010 AAPT Conference (Portland, OR)
Jim Reardon 7/26/10
Here are some notes on what I thought were the best presentations at
the summer 2010 AAPT conference. Conference program is here:
http://www.aapt.org/Conferences/sm2010/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=25474
If you're interested in a topic not mentioned below, please e-mail
reardon@physics.wisc.edu.
1. Video analysis of students (Session IF: Panel: Out
of one, many: Researchers from five different perspectives
analyze the same student video)
I have long wanted to include in TA training video clips of actual
students in actual physics courses discussing physics. The
University of Maryland has recently produced a library of such clips,
which I now have on DVD courtesy of Rachel Scherr (recently of
University of Maryland, now of Seattle Pacific University).
I foresee using these clips for a variety of purposes:
a. at the beginning of TA training, to show new TA's how students
talk
b. in the middle of TA training, to give TA's practice paying
attention to student responses
c. to experienced TA's, to dissect various teaching strategies
shown by the TA's in the videos
2. Learning Assistants (multiple sessions)
A "Learning Assistant" is an undergraduate, perhaps interested in
pursuing a career in teaching, who does extremely well in Physics XXX,
and is recuited the following semester to help with teaching Physics
XXX. In large undergraduate courses which already have TA's, the
learning assistant is never responsible for student grades, but rather
helps TAs and faculty understand what works well in the class and what
doesn't from a student's point of view. Anecdotally, learning
assistants seem to be of the most use in the labs, where they can help
TA's prepare worksheets or establish "checkpoints" to test student
understanding.
This idea, of using learning assistants to help with large
undergraduate courses, seems to have originated at UC--Boulder in the
past decade--some history here:
http://cosmos.colorado.edu/stem/community/stem_las.php
http://www.aps.org/units/fed/newsletters/summer2006/otero.html
Michigan Tech uses learning assistants in some of their courses, in the
absence of significant support from the administration. The
Michigan Tech model for funding learning assistants is to charge a "lab
fee" for each student, and pay the learning assistant out of the lab
fee. The going rate for a learning assistant is about
$1500/semester. If we charged a lab fee of $10/student in one of
our smaller introductory courses, we could hire one learning assistant
for that course.
Might this be worth trying at UW, as an experiment?
More about learning assistants:
Physics Teacher Education Coalition: www.phystec.org
3. Miscellaneous Teaching Ideas
A. The Fun-fly stick (Michael Meyer, Michigan Tech)
In my opinion the most difficult experiment in the introductory courses
is the electrostatics lab, which comes right at the beginning of the
semester. It's difficult because:
--in the winter, the air is extremely dry, and potentials of thousands
of volts can be generated by a student shifting position in a chair (ie
it's hard to sort out cause and effect since there are so many causes)
--in the summer, the air is often humid, and any potential that is
generated leaks away quickly.
One possible fix to this is the "fun-fly stick", which is a $26
hand-held electrostatic generator:
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/product/fun-fly-stick
With this, it seems one can guarantee that, winter or summer, at least
part of the electrostatics lab will go according to plan. Brett
Unks and I will be testing out fun-fly sticks in the next few days
(July 26, 2010).
B. Take-home projects in the physics for engineers sequence
(Haraldur Audunsson, Reykjavik University)
I talked to Haraldur Audunsson of Reykjavik University about his poster
"Go ahead...apply your physics!" In his physics classes
(enrollments 100-200 students per semester) students are grouped in
teams of two, and each team asked to "construct and demonstrate a
working device, and, not the least, explain how it works!" The
students do this at home, on their own time; the instructors are asked
to judge the finished devices, which can be done in 5-10 minutes per
team. Students in the second-semester class might choose, for
example, build a working electric motor, and explain how it works.
C. The Egocentric coordinate system (Corinne Manogue, Oregon
State University)
"I am the origin. Everyone point in the direction of unit vector
r !" An easy way for an instructor to see what fraction of the
class needs help with spherical coordinates.
This and other little teaching tricks come from faculty at Oregon State
University, which recently revamped its upper-level physics major
courses:
http://physics.oregonstate.edu/paradigms/
I am hardly qualified to judge this revamping, but the OSU faculty at
the conference were full of little teaching tricks that help the
instructor see at a glance the level of understanding of each student,
not just the vocal ones.
D. Physics useful to a Medical Student (Russell Hobbie,
University of Minnesota)
A concise take on physics useful to a medical student:
https://files.oakland.edu/users/roth/web/AAPTMedicalPhysics.pdf
I admit to a soft spot for this presentation because it emphasizes
Fick's Law. I once sat in on one of my wife's medical school
classes, in which Fick's Law was discussed, and left with the
conviction that we (the Physics department) could do a much better job
explaining it. Perhaps we can send our faculty over to the
Medical School to give guest lectures; if not, at least we do a good
job teaching Fick's law well here.
E. Why Outreach?
There seems to be growing evidence that the best predictor of whether a
young student (eg 8th grade) will end up being a scientist is the
interest that student expresses in science (and not knowledge of
science as evidenced by test scores). Poster by Darren Wong Jon
Sien of the National Institute of Education in Singapore; corrabates
similar studies eg
http://www.peecworks.org/PEEC/PEEC_Research/S020F80F1-020F86F2